Dear friends,We at http://www.mahapajapati.com are taking applications for female lay stewards. Please visit our web site for an application located on the contact page. We are located in the Mojave Desert but are within ten minutes drive of Yucca Valley, CA. So it is not as remote as it sounds. The main duties of a lay steward are to shop for groceries using the monastery funds, to prepare and offer a simple breakfast, prepare and offer the main meal of the day before mid-day. Ideally we would like to have two lay stewards so that each can have more time for practice. Still since we don't eat after mid-day there is ample time for meditation.

Please visit our web site to see pictures of this beautiful high desert location. For more questions you may reply to this thread or give us a call at 760-369-0460.

I am a man, so obviously this isn't for me. But I have a question for you:

Is the situation with the steward one where they would have the opportunity to take ordination later after a successful stint as a steward, or are you just looking for a long term lay practitioner to help with the monastery's up keep.

I hope everything is going well for you and your nuns, it is wonderful that there is a nunnery out in the desert - I have visions of a Canticle for Lebowitz. We would love it if you would choose to stick around here on the boards and discuss the Dhamma with us

with mettaJack

"For a disciple who has conviction in the Teacher's message & lives to penetrate it, what accords with the Dhamma is this:'The Blessed One is the Teacher, I am a disciple. He is the one who knows, not I." - MN. 70 Kitagiri Sutta

Hi Jack,There is the potential for ordination at our monastery but we would also happily accept a lay woman who is content with the eight precepts.If she is set on pursuing ordination the process is a gradual one with one year as a lay steward and then if the abbess agrees there can be a samaneri ten precept ordination. If the samaneri wishes to pursue bhikkhuni ordinationand the abbess agrees then that would require two years as a samaneri and then the agreement of a sangha of ten bhikkhunisand ten bhikkhus. My ordination was held in Los Angeles at Dharma Vijaya and done in this way (dual ordination).

Thank you Venerable.I think I will put this thread in our announcements section.kind regards,

Ben

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.” - Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:in mountain clefts and chasms,loud gush the streamlets,but great rivers flow silently.- Sutta Nipata 3.725